This invention relates to a label dispensing system which functions to retrieve the bottom label in a stack of labels and move the label to a moving work piece, such as to moving terry cloth which will be made into towels.
It is customary to insert labels and the like in the hemmed edge of towels and other manufactured products, and to sew the label into the hem. The hem can be folded over the label, or the edge of the product can have an overedge stitch which also attaches the label to the product. In the past, hemmed edges of towels and other products were formed by hand, with a sewing machine operator guiding the edge of the material through a folder and sewing the fold closed. Labels were inserted by the operator into the hem as the hem was being sewn closed. More recently, automatic hemming systems have been developed which hem the edges of sheet material. Examples of such automatic systems are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,640,235, 3,772,948, 3,773,002 and 3,906,878.
Although the automatic hemming of sheet materials has been accomplished, the placement of labels in the hems of the sheet material is still difficult to accomplish. The label prior art placement systems are not very reliable in that they occasionally fail to dispense labels, the labels which are dispensed sometimes are not properly positioned on the work piece, and sometimes more than one label is dispensed at a time. It appears that one of the shortcomings in the prior art label dispensers is the ability of the dispenser to reliably separate the labels from one another as they are being dispensed from a supply. The threads in the label fabric tend to become somewhat entangled with the threads of an adjacent label, and when the label from the end of a stack is moved away from the stack it tends to cling to the stack or to carry the next label with it. Moreover, when suction devices are used to grip the end label in a stack, the air flow through the label and into the suction device sometimes pulls more than one label from the stack or fails to pull the end label from the stack.